1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique of immobilizing microobject to a solid-phase material; more specifically, the present invention relates to a method of immobilizing a microobject via an intermediate agent and the use thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Application of materials produced by immobilizing microobjects such as proteins in solid-phase materials to diagnostic uses, analytical applications, reactor applications, sensor applications, etc has been sought for. Under such applications, unless proteins and the like have their sites such as catalytic sites immobilized in exposed states, their substantial interaction efficiencies to function are decreased. Thus, attempts are made to impart a constant directionality to microobjects such as proteins, to orient and immobilize the microobjects to the surfaces of solid-phase materials.
For example, one of well-known method of a technique of fixing orientation using physical adsorption involves introducing a plurality of amino-acids including a carboxyl group, by gene recombination, into the C-terminal side of a protein, i.e. a microobject, while orienting and fixing the protein to the surface of a solid-phase material by treatment with polylysine or the like (Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2004-347317, hereinafter referred to as Patent Document 1). In addition, a method that entails introducing a hydrophobic polypeptide into an N-terminus or a C terminus by gene recombination and immobilizing such a protein to the surface of a substrate is known (Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 1990-79975, hereinafter referred to as Patent Document 2). Additionally, as a method of using a chemical bond to the surface of a solid-phase material is known; such method involves introducing an unnatural amino acid into a protein, i.e. an microobject, and then incorporating a reactive group that reacts with this unnatural amino acid into a solid-phase material, thus orienting and immobilizing the protein (Published Japanese Translations of PCT International Patent Application Publication No. 2006-511797, hereinafter referred to as Patent Document 3).
On the other hand, the present inventors have already developed a photo-immobilization method of immobilizing a microobject to a solid-phase material without using physical adsorption or chemical bonding (Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2003-329682, hereinafter referred to as Patent Document 4). The photo-immobilization method distributes a microobject such as a protein onto the surface of a solid-phase material that contains a photoresponsive component which is capable of being deformed by light; the method deforms the vicinity of the surface of the solid-phase material around the microobject by light irradiation to thereby immobilize the microobject (i.e. light fixation).